Creative Work
Essence of Toast
Each month I publish an essay via my newsletter Essence of Toast. From meditations on ADHD via Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space to thoughts about finding creative community when you are totally exhausted by the internet, you’ll find an archive of these letters on Substack.
Interests & Approach
I write across genres, but most of all I love language-driven essays that tell stories and ask questions at the same time.
Essays, stories, and articles
Jiu-Jitsu vs. the World
Identity Theory, May 2022
On Fantasy and Artifice
Entropy, January 2021
Entropy closed its site at the end of 2022—RIP!—so this essay isn’t currently available.
Coronavirus, Precarity, and Embodied Labor: Week One
The Crisis Times, April 2020
Dave’s House
[PANK], September 2019
Chocolat
Alchemy Journal of Translation, September 2019
Review: Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror
Entropy, July 2019
Entropy closed its site at the end of 2022—RIP!—so this review isn’t currently available.
André Thompson and Bryson Chaplin Explain How It Feels to Survive a Police Shooting
Teen Vogue, January 2018
The Inner Interdisciplinarity
Inkwell, September 2016
Featured Substack Posts
Shrieking Out Loud
On hypervigilance, creativity, and working in one’s natural voice
June 29, 2024
Room for the Unreal
ADHD via Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space
May 26, 2023
Snip One Thread
On being too tired to write
March 31, 2023
Zines
My first creative experiments involved a typewriter, a glue stick, a stack of old magazines, and the local copy shop. Though many years have passed since I shyly asked strangers at the Minneapolis Zine Fest if they’d like to trade zines, folding a small stack of 8 1/2 x 11 pages in half still feels a little magical to me.
I’ve digitized a few of these zines, and you can head this way to read them. Until future notice, others exist only in an overstuffed folio in a file cabinet. In the meantime, here is a small visual sample platter.
Interviews
I had the honor of speaking with Jared McCormack for the MFA Writers podcast. We chat about my writing practice, the blurry line between fiction and nonfiction, my MFA experience at UCSD, and the joys and pains of teaching in an R1 institution.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite streaming platform.
You can also find me in conversation with other artists on my podcast Experimental Practice.